Stephanie Laurens: The Historical Collection

As she turned her head toward the figure in the doorway, she sent up a prayer.

Please be a maid.

Of course she could not be so fortunate. A man stood in the connecting room doorway. He was holding a candle, and wearing nothing at all.

Well, he wasn’t truly naked, she corrected. He was clothed in something . That “something” was a damp scrap of linen clinging so precariously to his hips that it could slide to the floor at any moment—but it qualified as clothing of a sort.

And everyone was naked beneath their clothing, weren’t they? This wasn’t so different. Why be missish about it? After all, he didn’t look embarrassed. Not in the least.

No, he looked magnificent. Magnificently irate.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

His tone of voice was understandably angry. It was also knee-erasing.

Penny scrambled out from the bed hangings and all but tumbled to the floor. “I’m from next door. Where I live. In my house.”

“Well, I own this house.”

“I didn’t realize the new owner was in residence.”

“As of this evening, I am.”

“Yes. So I see.”

She saw a great deal. Far more than was proper. Yet she couldn’t tear her gaze away.

Lord, but he was a big, beautiful beast of a man.

There was just so much of him. Tall, broad, powerfully muscled. And utterly bare, save for that thin bit of toweling and his thick, dark hair. He had a great deal of hair. Not only plastered in damp curls on his head, but defining the hard line of his jaw. And lightly furring his chest.

He had nipples. Two of them.

Eyes, Penny. He has two of those, too. Focus on the eyes.

Sadly, that strategy didn’t help. His eyes were chips of onyx. Chips of onyx dipped in ink, then encased in obsidian, then daubed with pitch, then thrown into a fathomless pit. At midnight.

“Who are you?” she breathed.

“I’m Gabriel Duke.”

Gabriel Duke.

The Gabriel Duke?

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said out of habit, if only because she could hear her mother tut-tutting all the way from India.

“You shouldn’t be pleased. No one else is.”

No, they weren’t. The papers had exhausted an ocean of ink on this man, who came from unknown origins and now possessed untold influence. Ruthless, said some. Shameless, said others. Sinfully wealthy, they all agreed.

They called him the Duke of Ruin.

From somewhere above, Delilah gave a cheeky, almost salacious whistle. The parrot swooped out from beneath the bed hangings and flew all the way across the room, alighting on an unused candle sconce on the opposite wall. Placing herself directly behind Penny’s new, impressively virile neighbor.

Oh, you traitorous bird.

He flinched and ducked as the parrot swept overhead. “What the devil was that?”

“I can explain.”

I just don’t particularly want to.

“It’s a parrot,” she said. “My parrot.”

“Right. And who are you, again?”

“I … erm …” Her hands couldn’t decide where to be. They merely displayed the panicked desire to be anywhere else.

Water dripped from some hard, slick part of his body, counting out the beats of her mortification.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

“I’m Lady Penelope Campion.”

Lady Penelope Campion.

The Lady Penelope Campion?

Gabe tilted his head to one side, shaking the last bit of bathwater from his ear. He could not have heard her correctly. Surely she meant to say she was a servant in the house of Lady Penelope Campion.

“You can’t be Lady Penelope.”

“I can’t?”

“No. Lady Penelope is a spinster who lives alone with dozens of cats.”

“Not dozens ,” she said. “A touch over one dozen at the moment, but that’s only because it’s springtime. Kitten season, you know.”

No, he didn’t know. None of this made any sense whatsoever.

Lady Penelope Campion was the main reason he’d acquired this property. New-money families would pay outrageous amounts to live next door to a lady, even if said lady was an unappealing spinster.

How on earth was this woman a spinster? She was an earl’s daughter, surely possessed of a large dowry. If none of the title-hungry, debt-ridden layabouts in Mayfair had seen fit to propose marriage, simple logic dictated there must be something remarkably off-putting about her. An unbearably grating voice, perhaps. A snaggletooth, or poor personal hygiene.

But she displayed none of those features. She was young and pretty, with no detectable odor. Her teeth were a string of pearls, and she had a voice like sunshine. There was nothing off-putting about her whatsoever. She was … on-putting, in every way.

Good God, he was going to sell this house for a bloody fortune.

Assuming the lady wasn’t ruined, of course.

At her level of society, being ruined didn’t take much. Strictly as a random example, she could be ruined by being found alone and scarcely clothed in the bedchamber of the aristocracy’s most detested, and currently most naked, villain.

“You need to leave,” he said. “At once.”

“I can’t. Not before retrieving—”

“Wait here. I’m going to dress, and then I’ll see you home. Discreetly.”

“But—”

“No argument,” he growled.

Gabe had clawed and climbed his way out of the gutters, using the ruined aristocrats of London as stepping-stones along his way. But he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. He’d learned how to talk and walk among people who would think themselves his betters. But that lowborn street urchin still lived within him—including the rough cutpurse voice that had genteel ladies clutching their reticules. When he chose to use that voice, it seldom went unheeded.

Lady Penelope Campion wasn’t paying attention at all.

Her gaze was focused on something behind him, over his shoulder. He instinctively began to turn his head.

“Stop,” she said with perfect calm. “Don’t move.”

He heard a strange flutter, and in the next moment it happened.

A bird landed on his shoulder. A parrot, she’d said? The creature’s toes prickled along his skin. His muscle twitched with the urge to shrug it off.

“No, don’t,” she said. “I’ll come for her.”

Usually, Gabe would balk at taking orders from a lady—or from anyone else. However, this was a decidedly unusual situation.

“Pretty girl,” the bird squawked.

Gabe set his jaw. Do you think I haven’t noticed that, you cursed pigeon with pretensions?

She crept toward him, padding noiselessly over the carpet, step by silent step. And as she came, sweet words fell from her lips like drops of raw honey.

“That’s it, darling,” she murmured.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck lifted.

“Stay … right … there.”

The hairs on his arms lifted, too.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Just like that.”

Now she had the hairs on his calves involved. Damn it, he had too many hairs. By the end of this they would all be standing at attention.

Along with other parts of him.

“Don’t stir,” she said.

He couldn’t speak for the parrot, but Gabe was doing some stirring. One part of him had a mind of its own, especially when it came to beautiful women in translucent chemises. He hadn’t lain with a woman in some time, but his body hadn’t forgotten how.

He couldn’t help himself. He stole a glance at her face. Just a half-second’s view. Not long enough to pore over every detail of her features. In fact, he didn’t get any further than her lips. Lips as lush as petals, painted in soft, tender pink.